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Monday, 3 March 2014

Tubular Life?

I came across this Theo Jansen TED Talks video while I was trying to source some materials for another module and it got me thinking back to some of the questions which were asked the week in which we were discussing embodiment. The title of this video in itself raises much debate. What exactly 'qualifies' as living? Are we prepared to classify these plastic tube structures as living? It is wrong to say we cannot call them 'living' due to their lack of a brain, heart and other human like structures, as of course humans and animals are not the sole living beings. Bacteria, fungi and plants of course are members of this 'living group'. It leaves question in my mind once again of the cognition versus computation debate and whether robots and kinetic structures such as this could ever be considered to be 'living' or indeed to possess a mind or conciousness.